Education, at its best, is liberation. But for too long in America, it has also been indoctrination—a tool used not to confront racism and privilege but to conceal them. The role of education in addressing racial injustice is not theoretical; it is structural, urgent, and deeply personal. Whether it dismantles or sustains racism depends entirely on what, how, and for whom we teach.
At its core, education is about storytelling: who we believe ourselves to be as a nation, whose lives matter, whose history is centered, and whose pain is ignored. Most students in the United States graduate without a comprehensive understanding of slavery’s legacy, Indigenous genocide, colonial conquest, or the systemic policies that created today’s racial wealth and opportunity gaps. This willful omission is not a failure of the system—it is the system working exactly as designed. A curriculum that ignores racism helps preserve white innocence and upholds racial privilege as normal.
An anti-racist education, by contrast, tells the truth. It makes visible the structures that maintain inequality—redlining, school segregation, environmental racism, mass incarceration, unequal healthcare, and more. It introduces students to the reality that racism is not simply about personal hatred or slurs but about power, policy, and systems. It equips learners to recognize how privilege operates—not only in who gets hired or admitted to college, but in who gets believed, protected, and invested in. By making these patterns visible, education can begin to challenge the normalization of injustice.
But the role of education cannot stop at exposure. True anti-racist teaching must also cultivate critical consciousness—what Paulo Freire called conscientização. This is the process by which individuals not only understand oppression but recognize their own power to resist and change it. Students need to ask hard questions: Who benefits from the status quo? Why are schools in Black and Brown communities underfunded? Why do white students often receive second chances for the same behavior that gets Black students suspended or arrested? Education should not produce passive citizens. It should produce active participants in the ongoing struggle for justice.
However, the current educational system too often fails this test. Schools routinely reproduce racial disparities rather than remedy them. Black and Brown students are disproportionately subjected to punitive discipline, placed in special education, and excluded from gifted programs. Curricula remain overwhelmingly Eurocentric. Textbooks sanitize American history. Standardized tests reflect cultural bias. And when teachers attempt to introduce critical race theory, LGBTQ+ rights, or decolonial history, they are attacked, censored, or even fired.
This is not accidental. It is backlash. As communities of color gain voice and visibility, power responds by retrenching. The movement to ban books, limit discussions of race, and eliminate DEI programs is not about protecting students—it is about protecting white supremacy. It is a modern-day version of literacy tests and gag rules, updated for a new generation.
The danger becomes even more acute under Trump and the MAGA movement. These are not just political campaigns; they are ideological assaults on education itself. Trump has promised to eliminate the Department of Education, criminalize “left-wing indoctrination,” and purge schools of what he calls “woke propaganda.” MAGA governors and legislators have already banned books by Black, queer, and Indigenous authors, defunded ethnic studies, and passed laws that prevent teachers from telling the truth about racism in America. These policies are not about freedom—they are about forced ignorance. They seek to impose a state-sponsored narrative that erases the struggles and contributions of marginalized people and replaces them with nationalist mythologies.
Trump has promised to eliminate the Department of Education—a move that would have devastating consequences for civil rights enforcement, public education funding, and national equity standards. The Department was established not only to coordinate federal support for education, but also to enforce desegregation orders, protect students with disabilities, and ensure schools comply with Title VI (prohibiting racial discrimination), Title IX (protecting against sex-based discrimination), and other federal civil rights laws.
Its elimination would strip away one of the few levers of federal accountability that has historically been used—however imperfectly—to challenge systemic inequities in schools. States with a long history of racial and economic segregation would face even less oversight. Funding formulas that currently support low-income, Black, Indigenous, and immigrant communities would likely be gutted. Programs aimed at educational access for students with disabilities, English language learners, and historically underrepresented groups would be vulnerable or erased entirely.
MAGA’s calls to dismantle the Department aren’t just about shrinking government—they are about dismantling civil rights infrastructure. And when you dismantle the mechanisms that protect equity, you guarantee the survival of privilege. The result would be a fractured, deregulated system where states are free to whitewash history, defund public education, and deepen racial disparities without consequence or intervention.
To address racism and privilege, education must be reimagined from the ground up. That means universal access to equitable resources, culturally responsive teaching, and a commitment to truth-telling—not myth-making. It means investing in Black and Brown educators, dismantling school policing systems, and creating space for marginalized students to tell their own stories. It means resisting political agendas—like those driven by Trump and MAGA—that seek to erase the very conversations we need to have.
Ultimately, education is not just about test scores or job training. It is about shaping the moral and political fabric of our society. A just education does not pretend that all children start from the same place. It recognizes the weight of history and the urgency of repair. It teaches not just what the world is, but what it could be. And it dares students—especially those pushed to the margins—to believe they have the power to remake it.
Until we align our schools with justice, education will remain a double-edged sword: capable of awakening minds or anesthetizing them. The choice is ours. Silence or truth. Complacency or resistance. Indoctrination or liberation.
Vernellia R. Randall, Professor Emerita of Law, University of Dayton School of Law.
